How We Survive
by intrajanelle
Summary: Young Justice/Pacific Rim AU. Artemis and Jade are still kids when the first Kaiju attack kills their mother. They become the youngest Jaeger pilots in the history of the program, kicking all kinds of ass until Jade dies. Artemis then transfers to an independent Jaeger program to work with a squad of kids who she'll have to learn to befriend if she wants to save the world.


a/n: Over on my tumblr account (intrajanelle) I have posted this with all the disclaimers and sources, so check that out if you want to see some of the inspirations I had for this fic. Otherwise I hope you enjoy it. I planned on writing this since I saw Pacific Rim and only just now found time to get it all out so I hope its decent. ALSO IMPORTANT part 21 is smut, I labeled it so you can skip over it if its not your thing.

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How We Survive

by intrajanelle

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1

The first Kaiju attacks when Artemis is nine and Jade is thirteen.

They are living in Trieu Phong, Vietnam, a small seaside town, with their wheelchair bound mother, and the wave is very big. They won't see the monster that created it until they are at a refugee camp in Nha Trang but the wave itself is enough to haunt their memories for years. It rises over the province like a giant hand and washes everything away on its descent as if it's merely swatting some dirt.

Artemis and Jade watch from the hills. They heard the sirens while they were at school and had been ushered away from town before they understood what was happening. Jade holds Artemis back when the little girl shakes herself free of shock and launches in the direction of their home.

She yells a deluge of curses at her older sister, all in Vietnamese, as she wriggles in Jade's arms.

Jade spins Artemis around and kneels in front of her. As she holds her shoulders and looks her square in the eye, she says, "Mom's gone, Artemis."

Artemis slaps her and sinks to the ground, her shoulders shaking. She's too young to understand just how much this event will shape her life, all she knows right now is that her mother is dead.

After a moment of cradling her red cheek Jade tells Artemis that they are all they have left.

2

Its six months later, while Artemis and Jade are hunting for scraps in Hanoi after having escaped the girl's home they had been sentenced to live in, that the second Kaiju attacks. This one wrangles Tokyo into a massive heap of crushed skyscrapers and the sisters' watch from a small TV propped on the counter of a noodle shop.

There are many more screams echoing the streets of Hanoi than the streets of Tokyo, but Artemis assumes that's because not many people survived there. Jade lets her hold her hand until they find an alley to spend the night.

Under her sisters watchful eye Artemis leans back on a bed of newspapers and Styrofoam and dreams of the wave that killed her mother.

3

The Jaeger program doesn't officially start for five more years. By then Artemis and Jade have fought together enough to know that they'd be good candidates for pilots.

Jade is deadly and she doesn't need to so much as glance at her sister for Artemis to know what she's thinking. They might not even require the drift.

When they watch TV in restaurants and malls and bus stops, or when they manage to steal a newspaper, they check for news of Jaeger pilots first. Many people die those first few months. The drift is not for everyone and in their rush to build war machines construction crews cripple their workers.

When the Jaeger program comes to Hanoi, it is a representative of the conglomerate that is China, Japan, Vietnam, The Philippines and Indonesia. Together, all of these countries are building two Jaegers. They need a dozen pairs of pilots and hold an open audition. Nobody expects two dirty, skinny girls in faded jeans to beat the hundreds of bulky men lined up for the task, but they do and when the representative tells the sisters they passed Artemis doesn't miss the murderous gleam in her sister's eyes.

They are the youngest pilots allowed into the program.

In Pilot School, two months later, the sisters get their first glimpse of what they hope will be their Jaeger. Her name is Tigress and she's lithe, striped and powerful. Everything Jade has ever wanted to be.

4

Artemis studies hard. Pilot School is a lot like going to a fancy private academy, although, luckily, there are no embarrassing uniforms. Artemis doesn't think she'd wear a pleated skirt if they paid her. Which they do, actually.

For the first time in their lives Jade and Artemis don't go hungry. They are fed, clothed and sheltered. They live in relative peace, easing into a daily schedule of physical training, mental training, physical training and then sleep.

They have bunk beds and Artemis lies on the bottom bunk listening to her sister's even breathing, reveling in the fact that they can sleep at the same time now. No more shifts, no more starvation, no more clutching the corner of Jade's shirt when she's scared.

They have a place here.

That is, until they have a very obvious place and they are thrown headfirst into the drift with little more than an hours warning.

"We need eight more pilots," Dinah Lance, their physical training instructor, says as an explanation. "We lost so many this week alone."

Artemis asks who they lost while Dinah walks them through the process of getting into their gear. It's like wearing armor, only its not as heavy. As Artemis looks down at herself in the brushed metal suit, only then does she realize how much she's grown.

Dinah lists a number of fallen pilots. The list includes Diana Prince, one of the first pilots ever, and her partner, and sister, Donna Troy. Artemis hopes the fact that her and Jade are replacing a pair of sisters isn't a bad omen. There's also Lois Lane and Victor Stone, who would be missed, and Hal Jordan, who wouldn't

Dinah finishes with a choked, "Roy Harper," as if the name means something to her.

It obviously means something to Jade, whose eyes widen a fraction.

"But I would worry about the drift for now," Dinah says, leading them down the hall, toward the drift simulator. "This is the hard part."

5

It's like falling down the stairs, only instead of stairs bruising every inch of her body its memory after memory.

Neither of them chase the R.A.B.I.T. They fall into sync with each other almost too easily, but a fraction of a second before her mind reels itself together Artemis is falling through her past, through Jade's past. Through a past she though they shared but in a sick twist of fate turns out to be hers alone.

Jade's memories are tinted red and gray like she can't decide between anger or depression over what happened in Trieu Phong, and they are all of fights. Punch after punch after punch replays across Artemis' mind. More fights than she's helped her sister with. More fights than she thought Jade had been in. And although they are drift compatible and Dinah greets them in the control room with a proud, if teary, smile Artemis can't help but wonder if she really knows her sister at all.

6

They are assigned to Tigress and their first fight is too easy. It's on a beachside city in China and the Kaiju goes down in less than five minutes. There are only two-dozen casualties. It's a new record for a Kaiju attack on any city and Artemis and Jade become famous quickly.

Some people call them 'Catwomen.' Some people call them nothing more than 'The Orphans.'

Artemis likes when she sees an article about her and her sister and they call her simply Artemis. It makes her feel like the goddess her mother named her for, strong and fearless and unstoppable.

With every fight they win Artemis and Jade become more and more cocky, until one day when Jade slips and Artemis sees everything.

In retrospect Artemis has no idea how Jade kept from having this memory at the forefront of her mind the entire time they drifted. She would be impressed if she weren't so sickened.

It takes them an extra ten minutes to kill the Kaiju and Artemis winces with every building that is reduced to rubble from her negligence.

She doesn't say anything to her sister until they're back at base. She opens the conversation by punching Jade in the nose.

Jade doesn't fight back, just stands there, fingering the blood that pools in her parted lips.

"Were you ever going to tell me?" Artemis demands.

"What?" Jade asks, all nonchalant like Artemis hasn't just seen the darkest pits of her memory.

Artemis punches her again, knocking Jade to the ground. She straddles her and throws punch after punch while their instructors and other various Jaeger workers circle them with unease.

Dinah, from the back of the crowd, yells for them to stop but Artemis doesn't comply until Jade plucks her fist from the air and holds it down. At this point Artemis' shoulders wrack with sobs.

"When were you going to tell me mom survived the tsunami?" she says in a whisper as she slides off Jade.

Jade sits up and fondles her broken nose. Her features are schooled into an emotionless mask, that make the bruises along her jawline seem almost unreal.

"I wasn't," Jade says. "She didn't live much longer, Artemis. She was only in pain at the refugee camp for a few days before she passed. It would have been worse to give her back to you just before she died."

"But—" Artemis says, placing her head in her hands. She knows, somewhere deep down, that her sister is right, but it still hurts an awful lot worse than any punch to know that Jade had been able to say goodbye to their mother while she hadn't. "How did you know she was there?"

"I didn't," Jade says. She meets Artemis' eyes just before she reveals a final secret. "Dad did."

This will be the last thing Jade ever says to her sister. Seconds later the Kaiju alarm echoes through the corridor and with muffled excuses that their Jaeger is the one least damaged from the last fight, Artemis and Jade are scurried back into Tigress.

Dinah sets Jade's nose while they stand in the cockpit. There's a faint crack as the bones settle into place and Jade barely winces, only frowns before tucking her hair back and pulling the helmet over her head.

Dinah wishes them luck and rushes back to the control room.

Artemis says, "We're going to talk about this," before she puts her helmet on.

Jade nods once.

Outside rain pelts Tigress and Artemis tries to keep her emotions in check as they sprint toward China.

7

There's a fishing boat. The boat has just a five-man crew, but all those men have families and Artemis and Jade ignore Dinah's orders not to help as the Kaiju looms over the tiny vessel.

Artemis plucks the boat into an oversized Jaeger hand and slides it into the ocean some hundreds of feet away. She feels grateful that those men's children will still have fathers in the morning. Their families won't be carry the burden that hers does.

Jade's feelings echo her own and for a moment they are mercifully in sync, until the Kaiju jumps them. They're used to Kaiju doing whatever they can to try to rip them to pieces, but this one is different.

It doesn't treat them like a being of similar size, it treats like the robot they are, going straight for the cockpit with long barnacled nails. It rips through the left side of the Jaeger's head and alarms start flashing from every corner of the room. Water seeps through the jagged hole and Artemis struggles to regain her bearings long enough to pry the stupid reptile off them.

She reaches with the Jaeger's right hand, yanking on the beasts hide but it swats her away as easily as scolding a child.

The Kaiju's roar echoes in Artemis' ears as it gnaws on the cockpit. She can't tell saliva from rain. She can't tell Jade's blood from her own. When she gets enough control of the Jaeger to pull an arrow from the retractable crossbow at Tigress' side and shove it into the Kaiju's neck it isn't until the beasts dead carcass belly flops into the ocean that Artemis notices the silence.

She can't put her finger on it but its almost like there had been a very loud buzzing in her ears for as long as she can remember and now that its gone she can hear too clearly, like the world has developed surround sound.

"I could really use some help here Jade," Artemis says, but she can't look to her left. She's almost positive she has whiplash. Her neck won't budge. Everything hurts from her head down to her feet and it's all she can do to maneuver the Jaeger the five miles to the beach while controlling only one half of the robot's body. It's like limping, only limping with an anvil tied to her back and by the time she reaches land she allows Tigress to collapse to the sand.

When she unbuckles her suit from the controls and lies against the wall of the cockpit, because everything's sideways, she notices the entire left side of the room is nothing but a giant hole, like something big had taken a bite out of her Jaeger. She doesn't have time to understand what that means before she loses consciousness.

8

Four days later Artemis wakes in a med bay. The curtains around her bed shield her from the nurses and patients, but not their voices. She squeezes her eyes shut again and curls onto her side, ignoring the pain that pours down her neck and legs.

"You shouldn't move," Dinah says as she ducks past the curtain.

"Where's my sister?" Artemis asks, her voice both rusty and strangled, almost unintelligible.

It's only the look on Dinah's face that lets Artemis know she understands.

"We had them hold off the funeral," Dinah says, pushing on Artemis' shoulder. "You should lay back."

Artemis is obedient as Dinah explains that Jade's body was not recovered. The only reason they know she's dead is because her vitals dropped seconds before the Kaiju disconnected Jade's suit from the cockpit. Dinah says all of this with a soft, robotic tone, not even looking at Artemis as she does so. Instead, she twirls a gold band around her ring finger.

She's probably told too many pilots that their partners are gone in the past few months.

To the surprise of no one, Artemis takes the news badly. She's quiet for minutes after Dinah leaves and then she's on her feet, stomping through the med bay, trying to get to her room through the pain.

It's all a joke, she thinks, as she spins around the arms and legs of RNs trying to grab her and dose her with an anesthetic. Jade's probably laughing her ass off about her latest prank as she reclines on her top bunk, readings rags featuring the top ten hottest Jaeger pilots of the year.

It's not real, she thinks, even though the silence echoes in her brain telling her that, yes, it is. It's very real. Jade's very gone. She's very alone.

Artemis starts a scream just as Dinah rushes back into the med bay and holds her down long enough for an RN to dose her. The last thing she sees are the tears pouring past Dinah's cheeks.

9

Artemis doesn't know why they keep her around. She's a good combat trainer, she can even repair armor and some of the engine components of the Jaeger's if necessary, but this is a military base. There are hundreds of combat trainers, thousands of mechanics they could choose from. Artemis is as expendable as a used sponge. Especially since she hasn't been drift compatible with any of the hundreds of hopefuls who had auditioned with her.

Dinah says it's just the grief and that Artemis is a good fighter with valuable experience and she's still an asset. Artemis is less certain, but she's grateful she gets to stay at the base. She has nowhere else to go.

So when the Jaeger program is shutdown in favor of building really big walls to keep the lizards out Artemis is both crushed and livid. She doesn't know who's running the UN these days but whoever it is, is watching way too much crappy anime. Giant war machines are one thing but thick, concrete walls? How would they ever build them before the Kaiju attacked again? And how would they keep anything out for very long?

Apparently, someone agrees with her on this because the day Artemis returns to her quiet room to pack her meager belongings a letter is waiting on her bed. It's addressed to simply, Artemis, which practically wins her over right then and there. But the letter itself is an even better means to winning her over.

It's from a man named Bruce Wayne, a wealthy sponsor, who wants to open up an independent Jaeger program. Covert, he writes, and he uses the word a lot, this is going to be a very covert operation. No one is to know where she is going until she's at, what Wayne calls, The Cave.

There, a few fellow pilots will be waiting to train with her. One will be her new partner. Artemis hesitates as Wayne explains in his neat penmanship that he understands if her grief is too great to allow her to drift again, but he hopes that she will for the betterment of the world.

Well, Artemis thinks as she sets the letter down. Its not like she has anywhere else to go.

In the dim light of her once shared room she decides to give this new Jaeger program a try.

10

Two weeks later Artemis sits in a helicopter opposite a kid who must be her age but is half a foot shorter than her. He's wearing sunglasses and every few minutes he pushes them up the bridge of his nose like they're reading glasses and continues typing notes on his iPad.

When Artemis clears her throat the kid looks up, his face seems unruffled with his eyes covered up like that.

"My name's Richard by the way, but you can call me Dick," he says, reaching to shake her hand across the aisle, like they'd been in the middle of a conversation.

"Artemis," she says, shaking his hand.

"Oh, I know who you are," Dick says without looking up from his iPad. "Artemis Nguyen, formerly Artemis Crock. You lived in Gotham until you were four and then your mom moved with you and your sister to Trieu Phong, Vietnam after a divorce with your father. You lived on the streets of Hanoi after the first Kaiju attack and at fifteen became the youngest Jaeger pilot in history just two years ago. Am I missing anything?"

"My entire family is dead, you missed that," Artemis says. She can't help the bitter tone of her voice anymore than she can help how pinched her entire body has felt since Jade died.

"Mine too," Dick says, looking up at her.

Artemis presses her hands to her lap at this confession. She watches him with narrowed eyes as he slips his sunglasses off. His eyes are very blue, which she hadn't expected from his black hair.

He watches her as he says, "It was the second attack on Tokyo, my family was travelling. None of them made it. Bruce adopted me so he's all I've got now."

Artemis is about to say I'm sorry, or something equally meaningless when someone in the cockpit of the helicopter gives a loud, "Ahem."

"Oh, and you too, Alfred, sorry," Dick says, smiling in the direction of the voice.

When Dick meets her eyes again he seems a little happier.

"So. Are you ready to meet the rest of the team?"

"I thought I was," Artemis says, leaning back into her seat.

She doesn't know where this place is but she guesses Japan from the trajectory of the helicopter and the amount of time they've been in the air. She divides the time she waits to get there by trying to interpret what Dick's typing, and staring out the window.

She's never liked flying, so she's happy when they begin to land.

It isn't until Artemis steps out of the helicopter that she learns exactly why 'The Cave' is called the 'The Cave.'

11

It's literally a hollow mountain, a giant ass cave, filled with Jaeger's.

Okay, maybe not filled, but there are more Jaeger's here than she's seen in one place in her entire career. That is to say, there are four.

On her grand tour, Dick introduces her to Atlantis, a hulking orange beast with metal scales and a scepter in one hand, the Bio-Ship, a short red round thing that looks more like a plane than a Jaeger, Dr. Fate, a giant masked suit of armor painted entirely gold, and Spitfire.

Artemis likes Spitfire, despite the ridiculous name. It's the simplest of the four, tall and lithe, with, from Dick's description, a myriad of weapons at its disposal including arrows and heightened speed capabilities. The only strange thing is the paint. Who in the their right mind decided yellow and green was a good combination?

Even so, Artemis stares at Spitfire like a second Tigress.

"Do all of these Jaeger's have assigned pilots?" she asks Dick.

"Yes, except the Bio-Ship and Spitfire," Dick says, gesturing between them. "Dr. Fate has a father/daughter team and Atlantis has Kaldur."

Artemis waits to learn Kaldur's partners name but when Dick doesn't say anything more she spins on him. "Are you saying this Kaldur pilots that thing by himself?"

"Sure does," Dick says. "He's the only person in the history of the Jaeger program who doesn't require a partner and when he does drift with someone else, it can be anybody. He'd be drift compatible with a chimpanzee."

Artemis' heart thumps louder in her chest. She misses Dick say, "He used to have just one partner, though," in her anxiety.

Shortly after Jade died Dinah told her she piloted Tigress on her own for nearly ten minutes, which should have been impossible. No one was strong enough to pilot a Jaeger by themselves and live. Artemis had gone into a coma for four days after only a few minutes. This Kaldur has to be very strong. He has to be nearly Kaiju himself.

"Ah, there he is now," Dick says, staring at the pathway that separates the hanger from the living quarters.

There, on the ground, is a boy sitting with his legs crossed. He's soaked and it isn't until she and Dick get a little closer that Artemis realizes he's wearing only a bathing suit and a t-shirt.

"I still do not see how this constituted as training, Wally," he says to seemingly no one.

"We were bonding!" an exuberant voice chirps and all of a sudden there's a redheaded boy careening onto the pathway with two other teenagers in tow. "What could be better training than that?"

This boy is shirtless and also soaked. There's sunscreen smeared on his nose and a sunburn forming on his shoulders and when the two people he'd been dragging shrug his hands off he smiles at them as he says, "You guys are no fun."

"Good timing," Dick says, attracting the attention of every single one of them.

Artemis glances at him in shock, wanting to silence him with a well-placed jab and escape into a different corner of The Cave. She's never been good at dealing with kids her own age. Even her sister had been older than her.

Despite his height Artemis already considers Dick to be an adult and the thought of social interaction that isn't strictly business related actually sets her nerves on edge. Digging her heels in where she stands, Artemis does not follow Dick as he approaches the others. She stays a good distance and watches them watch her.

"This is our new pilot, Artemis Crock," Dick says.

The redhead's smile disappears as quickly as he had appeared in the first place. He frowns at her and places his hands on his hips.

"You mean, _this_ is Roy's replacement," he says, just loud enough for her to hear.

"Wally!" the girl he'd been dragging says as she covers her mouth with a hand. This girl is very pretty, with freckles and red hair, a clean shirt, clean skirt and Mary Jane's. She looks like she just stepped out of an eighties sitcom.

"We're not replacing anyone, but we do need a new pilot and Artemis was—"

"The youngest in history," Kaldur says, interrupting Dick. He's in front of Artemis before she even recognizes that he stood, which she sums to having been glaring at this Wally dude, the entire time. Kaldur shakes her hand. "We are honored to have you on the team."

"Yup, its great, to, um, be here," Artemis says, lying through her teeth.

"I am sorry for my appearance, we were at the beach all day per Wally's request."

She tells him its fine but she can still feel Wally's glare, a hot tingle on the side of her head, as the others approach and introduce themselves.

The old-fashioned girl is M'gann and Artemis knows from her name alone that she's one of the Martians.

They're a radical group in California that, for whatever deluded reason, believe they are related to the Kaiju. They live in this gated community by the ocean and preach all over the news that the Kaiju are there to save them. Artemis has always thought they were crazy but this girl seems very normal, if not for her strangely neat clothes. She doesn't have the green tint to her skin that the rest of her people do, supposedly from prolonged exposure to Kaiju carcasses, but when she reaches to shake Artemis' hand, Artemis can see the green tentacle tattoos lining the insides of her arms.

M'gann smiles as she introduces the boy beside her as her boyfriend, Conner. Artemis' heart almost sinks when she realizes Conner's taken because, damn, he's pretty well built. Tall and muscular with thick black hair and blue eyes, he could be Dick's better-looking older brother. He does seem a tad gruff though, only grunting a "hey" as he shakes her hand.

He would have been Jade's type. If Jade were there she would have staked him as her own, girlfriend or not.

M'gann has to coax Wally into introducing himself. Artemis, in any other frame of mind, would have been angry and defensive of his cold behavior. But Jade has just died and she can see the same confused loss in her eyes that rests in Wally's.

When he says, "Welcome to the team," Artemis thanks him and follows Dick to her room without instigating a fight.

She thinks this might mean she's grown a little. She wonders if Jade would approve. Probably not, though, Jade would have punched Wally West in the jaw.

12

She doesn't meet Bruce Wayne for another two days, when she does its in the control room and he's with another, familiar man.

During those two days Artemis only sees the others at meals in the cafeteria. She hasn't been to school past the fourth grade but if she had she would have said that the Jaeger cafeteria was like having lunch in a very cliquey high school. Wally, M'gann, Conner, Kaldur and Dick sit at one table, mechanics sit another, researchers sit at yet another. On one side an older man sits with a girl who seems to be Artemis' age, every time the girl gets up to leave the older man fixes her with a glare and starts shouting in Italian.

Artemis, despite M'gann's invitation, sits in an empty table in the furthest corner. She eats and she returns to her training and that's that. No need to make friends for Artemis, if worse comes to worse they can have her scrub toilets for all she cares, she isn't in the 'friend-making with the intention of finding a drift compatible partner' mood.

Her training goes well there because they have better facilities than the Pilot School. This surprises her, but Wayne hadn't spared any expense on equipment. If her thoughts drift to Jade she can run or bike or fling herself between high-bars until she's so dizzy that all memories of her sister are scattered.

As much as she longed not to grieve, she can't help but remember some of her sister's last words. Her dad was still alive, or at the very least, he had been eight years ago, which was something Artemis had thought unlikely.

She is still thinking of Lawrence Crock when Dick leads her to the control room the morning of her third day.

Wayne introduces himself as Bruce and introduces the man beside him as Oliver Queen. The realization of who this blond man is falls on Artemis' shoulders like a couple of weights, like she's still back in the training room.

"I believe you've already met my lovely wife," Queen says, shaking her hand.

Artemis just can't seem to escape Dinah, no matter where she goes.

"She was worried about you. Then when I heard Bruce hired a new pilot I hurried on up to see if it was the great Artemis Nguyen, and sure enough." Oliver Queen smiles like it's the greatest honor in the world to meet her. His smile only falters as he finishes his explanation. "I'm a sponsor by the way. I helped build Spitfire, for, um, for my son."

Artemis nods. She'd realized Dinah's connection to Roy Harper a while ago. This man is still grieving too, though he hides it well behind smiles and friendly handshakes. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"No, I'm sorry for your loss Artemis. I can't even imagine—" Queen trails off, perhaps not even being able to put words to what he can't imagine. Indeed, feeling your sister die inside your head, having that moment seared into your brain is something that doesn't really inspire the most verbose of explanations. Queen saves his smile and pats her shoulder. "Anyways it's an honor to have you even consider piloting my Jaeger," Queen says in a low serious voice before turning playful again, "Let's spy on the hopefuls shall we?"

13

The hopefuls are M'gann, Conner and Wally. And herself, of course, but she doesn't need to spar with these three to decide whom she's drift compatible with.

Wayne and Queen watch from the doorway, while her and Dick slip into a corner.

Artemis notices quickly that size and strength are really all Conner has going for him. She would have thought he would be better at hand-to-hand combat but Wally takes him down easily. Even helps him to his feet afterward.

"Good job, dude," he says, clapping him on the shoulder.

M'gann spars with Wally next and she's slightly better. She's small and fast but Wally's faster. He hesitates in the beginning, seeming afraid to fight pretty, polite M'gann before she says, "It's okay, Wally. Don't hold back." He soon takes her out by crouching and kicking her legs out from under her.

When M'gann and Conner fight they are equally matched. Conner is strong, M'gann is lithe and together they fight like they're dancing around each other, like they're barely touching the ground. Neither one of them wins, in the end it's a draw and Wayne steps from the shadows to announce they will attempt to drift in the Bio-Ship later that afternoon.

This is news to Artemis, who thought for a first drift, they should use the drift simulator in the training room but Dick tells her that they're in a hurry and Bruce needs to make sure they're not only compatible with each other but with the Jaeger, so as dangerous as it was they were starting out with the real deal.

Wally is happy for his friends for all of five minutes before he remembers what this means. The only Jaeger left is Spitfire and the only pilot left is Artemis.

She stands from where she was sitting in the corner and picks up a wooden katana. Wally watches her. She doesn't need to fight him to know that Wayne will make them drift but if she's going to open her mind to this close-minded redhead she's at least going to kick his ass first.

She makes the first move, sprints at him and then feints when he takes a defensive position. Twirling so she's behind him, she jabs her katana in three vital spots on his spine, sending him to his knees.

"Cheater," he says, whirling fast to smack her in the side with an outstretched hand.

This actually knocks the wind from her lungs and she's surprised for all of ten seconds before Wally's on his feet again. They continue back and forth like this until Artemis escapes from a headlock by flipping Wally onto his back and straddling him.

He glares up at her as Wayne announces they will practice a drift after M'gann and Conner, and Artemis glares right back, but offers him a hand when he tries to stand.

He takes it, and although it isn't the broadest gesture. It's something.

14

M'gann and Conner seem to drift before they're even hooked into their Jaeger. They communicate through glances and touches and the speed of their stride.

Red Tornado, a prototype Jaeger that is human-sized and entirely functioning on its AI software, helps them into their suits and then into the Bio-Ship.

Neither of them chase the R.A.B.I.T. and Artemis wonders how long they've dated, if enough of their memories are shared that it doesn't bother them occupy each other's minds. She almost curses the couple for being so good because she and Wally are on stage sooner than expected and as Artemis walks in the familiar clunky armor to Spitfire's cockpit she feels as if someone has dumped a bucket of cold water down her back.

15

Wally doesn't say a word to her before their helmets are on. He's quiet and fidgety and acts more like a thirteen-year-old on his first date than a licensed Jaeger pilot about to embark on a drift with his new partner.

Artemis can't say she acts any better. She ignores his long stares completely, in favor of tying her long hair into a bun and fitting her helmet over her head.

When Wayne turns Spitfire on there is a moment of nostalgic silence that fills Artemis' mind, the silence before the buzz of another person's subconscious flittering against her own. Five seconds into the drift Artemis is glad the weapons are turned off for this.

She thought her memories would bog them down, but she realizes too late that she's the one with experience. She's the one who knows how to hold back her past and maneuver her way through the drift while concentrating on the present moment. She's done it hundreds of times before.

Wally is one who lacks practice, so when the drift hits them, swirling their minds together in the giant soup bowl that is the Jaeger's brain Wally focuses on one memory in particular, clings to it and refuses to let go.

Spitfire's left arm shoots up to cover its face as Wally shakes and shakes and shakes.

Artemis forces herself into his mind, something she never had to do with Jade and has really only done once before, by accident, the day she saw her sister kneeling by a cot in the sick bay of the refugee camp, holding their mother's hand as she died.

In his head Wally is fighting with Roy Harper. Artemis recognizes the boy from one of Jade's magazines. He's tall and ginger and tone and totally Jade's type with the brooding blue eyes. He could be Wally's brother but Artemis knows he isn't from the drift alone.

Wally shouts to Roy that he's being selfish, that Oliver just built Spitfire for him and now he's running away.

"You don't know anything," Roy says.

They're standing on a cliff outside The Cave, rain pelts them from all directions and Wally shields his eyes with an arm. Beside Roy, on the ground, is a suitcase.

"I know you're being stupid!" Wally shouts. "You're running away. How can you do that?"

"I want to live my own life, Oliver has been making all of these decisions for _himself_ not for _me_," Roy says and in one fluid motion he rips the Queen Archery hat from his hat and throws it to the ground.

Wally looks like he's been slapped in the face. "Then what do you want?" Wally says, his voice sounding frustrated and tired. This single sentence echoes through the rest of their conversation.

"Wally," Artemis says, standing beside him. He doesn't seem to understand this is just a memory; he carries out the conversation as if it's happening in the present. "Wally, Spitfire is going to bust a hole in The Cave if you don't pull yourself together."

He ignores her and Artemis pulls on his sleeve as he convinces Roy to return to The Cave. She shakes his arm as he relives sitting in the control room as Roy and Kaldur get in Spitfire. She screams in his ear as he watches Spitfire go down in the middle of a fight with its pilots still inside.

"One pilot believed to be dead," a reporter says on the TV.

Wayne sits at his desk, head in his hands as Roy's vitals flat line on the monitor, leaving a shrill ringing in its wake.

"Wally it's not real!" Artemis shouts in his ear.

It isn't until she punches him that he's catapulted out of the memory and back into Spitfire. In The Cave their Jaeger is fighting against its restraints. When Wally regains consciousness it stills as he sits back in his harness and listens to Artemis whispering inside his head.

"It isn't real, it isn't real, it's in the past."

They drift in silence for a while, getting used to being inside each other's heads. It isn't as easy as it was with Jade, Artemis has to fight to stay focused but they run through the entire checklist of Spitfire's functions before unplugging for the day.

When they take their helmets off Wally stares at the ground before looking up at her with those big green eyes and saying thank you.

"No problem," she says, letting her hair fall around her shoulders.

"I'm sorry, about before, I'm just, I—"

"I get it," Artemis says, and she does. She knows how it feels to feel responsible for someone's death. She knows how good it feels to place the blame on someone else.

"I'll get better," Wally says. "I'll work at this, so, will you be my co-pilot?"

If he was on one knee Artemis would have thought he was asking her to get hitched. He was certainly red enough in the face.

"Why not?" she says with a laugh and this time, when they shake hands, there's no contempt bubbling beneath their skin.

16

When Artemis officially meets Zatanna she's been at The Cave for a week.

After that first drift Wally follows her around like a puppy. They bicker and she elbows him so much that her elbow is beginning to bruise but he's eager to learn how to drift with her. He wants to be the best pilot he can be, so Artemis teaches him everything she knows.

They run into Zatanna on a cold day just after a successful drift run in the training room.

She's sitting, alone for once, her hovering father nowhere to be seen, on the steps in front of Artemis' room.

"Hi," Zatanna says, standing up quickly when she notices Artemis in front of her. She extends a hand. "I'm Zatanna Zatara. I've been meaning to introduce myself I just— I hope we can be friends."

"Artemis," Artemis says, shaking her hand.

This girl is very small, with her black hair and blue eyes she could be Conner and Dick's younger sister. Artemis is starting to wonder what's with all the black haired blue-eyed genetic anomalies in The Cave. Maybe they were all clones.

Zatanna shakes her free of those thoughts when she yelps and stands between Artemis and Wally as her father comes sprinting down the hall.

"Zatanna," Zatara huffs as he comes to a halt in front of them. "What did I tell you? We train today. No time for chit-chat."

"But I just want to—"

"Why don't you understand? This isn't a game. One mistake and you could die," Zatara shouts. The quiet that follows this proclamation is more jarring than the proclamation itself. He grabs her arm a moment later and with a small apology to Artemis and Wally he drags her down the hall.

Artemis watches after them and Wally watches her.

"Don't worry, he's been like that since—well, Zatanna replaced his wife as his co-pilot," Wally says, pulling a granola bar from his pocket and stuffing it in his mouth. "You really can't blame him for having such a big stick up his ass."

Artemis nods and knocks a second granola bar out of Wally's hand when he pulls it out. "You eat too much."

17

There isn't a Kaiju attack for another two weeks and by this time Artemis is friendly enough with M'gann and Conner to be nervous when they're sent out.

She watches the fight with Wally and Dick in the control room, whooping when the Bio-Ship takes the Kaiju down with two simultaneous blows.

She feels at home here, so ridiculously at home that when Wally slaps her shoulder and Dick shakes her arm and Conner calls in to tell them to have dinner waiting, Artemis almost cries. She almost falls to her knees and cries. She never expected to have a family bigger than her sister. And after her sister died she'd been prepared to be alone for a very long time. But now she feels anything but alone.

She almost cries all over again when she realizes that this can't possibly last.

18

When Zatanna and Zatara are sent out three days later it's with much yelling. This fight seems worse than the others they've had since Artemis came here, and although they pilot Dr. Fate without much trouble, only Zatanna returns.

The Kaiju are getting stronger. This goes unnoticed by no one and talked about by just as many.

Artemis kneels by Zatanna when she loses her footing exiting Dr. Fate. They don't move for hours, Artemis stroking the girl's hair until she passes out in her armor on the floor of The Cave.

Wally helps carry her to her room. He waits outside the door as Artemis unstraps the girl's armor, one piece at a time, and pulls a blanket over her.

As they walk back Wally is uncharacteristically quiet. When they reach their rooms he stops her short of opening her door and for a moment it looks like he's going to say something. His lips open and close, helpless, until he presses them to hers in a chaste kiss. His entire face is red when he pulls away.

He tries to say something about regrets but Artemis silences him with another kiss, this one the furthest thing from chaste. They could do the thing where they skirt around their attraction to one another for another few months or they could make-out and Artemis, for one, very aware of her mortality since Jade's death, is all for making out.

The only reason they separate is the alarm that echoes down the hall, signaling another Kaiju attack.

"Crock and West report to the hanger," Wayne calls over the loudspeaker.

Wally entangles his fingers with hers and walks toward Spitfire with his soft lips in a prim line.

19

The next few fights are long and harrowing on everyone. During their time off the pilots do not train, rather, they lie on the workout mats in the training room and pass M'gann's charred cookies between each other. The workload is taking a toll on even Kaldur, who isn't used to piloting on his own each and every battle. He sits with his head in hands most days he isn't working, probably trying to keep his brain all in one place.

Dick argues with Bruce that he should be allowed to pilot Atlantis with Kaldur. The kid has certainly had enough training, and if anyone would be drift compatible with their fearless leader it would be Dick, who, with his intelligence and conniving nature, is a natural second-in-command.

Bruce puts his foot down about it though, he's very clear that Dick is not allowed near a Jaeger. It's only when Kaldur is sent to the med bay after a seizure that he reconsiders. Bruce has to decide whether he wants to lose his best pilot and the world, or his son, and its clear which choice he should make even if it isn't the easiest.

The first fight Kaldur and Dick are sent on they defeat the Kaiju in five minutes and thirty-nine seconds. Artemis knows this because Bruce stares between the clock and Dick's vitals the entire time it's going on.

When the boys return, triumphant, their celebration lasts all of ten seconds before the Kaiju alarm goes off again. Spitfire and the Bio-Ship are sent out. There are two Kaiju attacking the Philippines.

20

One quiet day Artemis finds Kaldur alone, on a cliff outside the cave, facing the ocean. He has a wallet full of photographs in one hand and when she sits down beside him he shows them to her without having to be asked.

There's one of a girl with long red hair, his first love he tells her in the same breath in which he explains that she loved his best friend. There's another picture of all three of them, Kaldur squished between his first love and best friend like a complacent third wheel.

There's one of his mom, who's gorgeous, and his stepfather, who is homely. There's even a small one of his birthfather, who he apparently hasn't seen since he was a child.

The one Artemis focuses on is a faded one of Kaldur and Roy Harper. They're standing on this very cliff. Roy making, what must pass for him as a smile, Kaldur with his arm looped around Roy's back.

"My second love," Kaldur says, staring over the water.

Artemis knows Roy died while they were drifting. She wonders if Kaldur can hear him something in the back of his mind, remnants of the redhead's inner voice, just like Artemis can hear Jade on those long, quiet nights. She doesn't ask though, just sits in silence, clutching the picture of Roy and Kaldur like an anchor as she keeps Kaldur company.

21

Naturally, due to the increased fighting, Wally and Artemis do not have time to do more than sneak a long kiss every other night. It isn't until a month after their first, when Artemis is feeling strained and tired, that she invites Wally into her bed. Perhaps its _because_ she's feeling strained and tired that makes this all the more necessary. She doesn't want to die without having sex with him. She tells herself its because she loves him because she's pretty sure that this panic in her chest is what love is, even though it's new and frightening.

Wally follows her hesitantly, a dozen 'are you sure's on his lips before Artemis kisses them away.

"I'm very sure," she says as she straddles him. He's shirtless but she's not positive how that happened. She kisses him with fervor until she feels his erection, hard against her thigh. "Too sure."

She slips her shirt off and reaches for the lube and a condom, in her top drawer. They're Jade's. She doesn't even know why she kept them, feels strange using them, but she doesn't have much option in the matter now as Wally grinds his hips into hers sending shivers racing through her thighs.

The foreplay is a hesitant affair, in which Wally flips her onto her back and runs a finger inside of her. It isn't until Artemis's legs begin to tighten while her head presses back into the pillow that she realizes if they don't start soon, she's going to peak from this alone.

It's in this realization that she groans and flips Wally onto his back. They take it slow. It isn't Artemis' first time but it's her first time in awhile and it hurts as much as it rouses her.

When she's settled against his hips with him fully inside her, only then does she start to thrust. She takes this slow too, keeps it to small indiscernible movements until her pace evens.

Wally groans underneath her, digging his nails into the small of her back. She leans in to kiss him when the Kaiju alarm interrupts her. They watch each other in quiet terror for a moment, there's only one light on in her room so the cramped metal bunker is filled with shadows.

She can hardly make out his full expression and she spends a moment of awkward stillness trying to determine whether he's angry or scared.

When there's a call for Kaldur, Wally tightens his grip on her pelvis.

"It's not us," she says.

"Not us," he echoes, his proclamation starting off scared but evening into a moan as she begins thrusting again with a sudden snap of her hips. He shudders and the sweat along his brow glistens in the lowlight.

If she thought she loved Wally fifteen minutes ago, when they entered her room, she loves him even more now as he unfurls underneath her, succumbing to his orgasm seconds before her own. It's a strange kind of love, she thinks. Even though she's not that experienced in loving a person romantically she knows that the way she loves Wally is quite different from the way Dinah loves Oliver or Kaldur loved his first love.

Its like something tight has gripped her heart whenever he's not nearby and when he is beside her the grip loosens a fraction. When they fuck the grip loosens completely allowing her to breathe.

As she pulls away and lies curled against Wally's chest their breath mingles in the stuffy room and Artemis realizes it must be the drift.

She'd known Jade long before the Jaeger program, but almost everything she knows so well about Wally came up in the drift. It's like they're linked mentally and physically even without their Jaeger, two people melded into one.

The fact that she would have loved Wally, Jaeger or no Jaeger, isn't a question. But she knows it's the Jaeger itself that solidified their bond so quickly and so completely.

She falls asleep like that, with one of Wally's arms curled around her.

When they wake in the morning it's to the news that Kaldur did not make it back.

21

The funeral is sadder than Zatara's and longer than Jade's. It's sadder only because there are three times as many people in attendance and it's longer for the very same reason. Artemis spends the majority of it in the last pew of the church, covering her face with her hands. It's a closed casket anyway, its not like she has a chance to see Kaldur one last time if she looks up.

Wally sits in the front row with Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen and every other pilot besides Dick, who sits to her left with a blank expression on his face.

Halfway through the service Bruce Wayne stands and tells the audience that Kaldur was the bravest, strongest pilot in his employ. That he went down fighting two Kaiju and only died after killing them both. It was the strain on his body, Bruce explains, clearing his throat, that's all.

At this Dick stands from the pew and leaves the church without a word.

Artemis finds him in the training room, punching holes in the concrete walls.

"It's not your fault," Artemis says.

"I know," Dick says, wiping bloody knuckles on his t-shirt. "But it's my responsibility."

"Dick—"

"If only Bruce trusted me more—"

"He trusts you," Artemis says, placing a hand on his shoulder only to have it brushed away.

"Not as a pilot, not enough to save Kaldur," Dick says, sinking to the training mat.

There's a moment of silence in which Artemis stands over him, at a loss as to what to say, before a small voice breaks the quiet.

"Dick," Zatanna says from the doorway. She's wearing the same black dress she wore to her father's funeral and she stands with her hands fisted at her sides like the very fabric makes her feel angry.

Dick looks up from the floor and says, "Yes?" in the smallest voice Artemis has ever heard him use.

"I need to ask a favor of you, for Kaldur, for— for my father," she says taking two steps forward.

"Sure," Dick says, clambering to his feet.

Zatanna's eyes are hard as she meets his curious gaze. "Be my co-pilot."

22

Wayne has a plan, a crazy, stupid, suicidal plan, to save the world. The Kaiju are coming through the breach in larger quantities every week and with the rest of the world withdrawing funding from their Jaeger programs to build large walls instead, like Kaiju have an acute understanding of property ownership, Wayne thinks it might be time for crazy.

Artemis doesn't exactly agree, especially when it puts the people she cares about in danger, but when Bruce allows Dick and Zatanna to pilot Dr. Fate for this mission, Artemis thinks he must be confident about his chances of winning this fight.

Soon after this he gathers them all in the control room and asks them in a firm voice if they know anyone with experience making nuclear missiles.

There is a silence in which no one says a word, M'gann looks like she's trying to determine if he's being sarcastic or not. After the initial shock Artemis raises a hesitant hand and says, "I know just the guy."

23

Of course, knowing a person isn't the same thing as knowing where they are, but Artemis figures Bruce Wayne, with all of his money and influence can find a scumbag like Lawrence Crock as easily as he can find a date to a banquet. Artemis knows he was alive eight years ago, so there has to be a possibility he's still alive now, and since the very reason her mother left him was because he was involved with the kind of people who did stupid things like make nuclear missiles, Artemis is sure he's the guy they need to see.

It takes Bruce two days to find him and after fifteen years of not seeing her father Artemis watches him step from a helicopter and enter The Cave, looking exactly as she remembered him, if a little grayer around the temples.

Wally has been forbidden from coming to this meeting, by Wayne himself, so that probably says a lot about Wally's maturity. He had promised he wouldn't punch her father in the face half a dozen times, and Artemis had believed him, but she held his hand just before she left their room, saying, "I need to do this on my own."

Of course, she never does anything alone anymore. M'gann and Conner stand beside her even though she promised she would be fine, M'gann holding her wrist.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't my baby girl. You've grown," Lawrence Crock says, looking his daughter up and down, then clucking his tongue. "But maybe not that much considering you still need Daddy's help."

Artemis considers punching him, thinks maybe Wayne should have forbidden her from being here instead of Wally, and she probably would have followed through on that punch if M'gann didn't tighten her grip on her wrist and step forward.

"You are here because we have business with you, Mr. Crock. _You_ have no business with _Artemis_," M'gann says.

"I have no business with a Martian," Lawrence says, sneering at M'gann's tattoos.

Conner takes a quick step forward, his fists rising like he's going to break Lawrence's nose. M'gann holds him back with a look and then fixes Lawrence under a similar gaze.

"Please keep your opinion of my religion and my family to yourself, Mr. Crock. We have more serious business to handle than your immature prejudices," M'gann says, her voice so crisp that Artemis wants to hug her. "If you'll follow me."

M'gann and Wayne handle the majority of the discussion. In the end Lawrence admits he still has connections to his idiot friends and their stupid nuclear missiles and he agrees to have half a dozen of them fastened into one giant warhead and shipped to The Cave a.s.a.p.

When Lawrence, about to leave her again, wavers in the door of the helicopter at the end of the day he looks down at his daughter and approaches her with caution.

"I'd like to hear it from you first, if this suicide mission actually works," he says, slipping a piece of paper with a phone number on it into her hand.

Artemis puts it in her pocket and watches Lawrence leave with a large amount of relief. She tells herself to throw away the paper when she gets back to her room, but somehow, Wally compromises her time and the paper stays.

24

Artemis and Wally have one last night together before this god-awful plan is meant to take place.

It begins when Wally ducks into her room and slides beside her where she lies on her bed.

"Is there something you want?" she asks.

She's only teasing. Wally is running a finger along the hem of her shirt. She knows what he wants.

"I have to ask you something, but I want you to know you don't have to answer if you don't want to," Wally says in a rush.

Artemis agrees and in the moment Wally takes to compose his question she knows what he's going to ask before he asks it. She goes very stiff, her hands clenching where they rest on her stomach.

"What did it feel like when your sister died?"

Artemis doesn't say anything.

"I mean—because you were drifting and you must have— You don't have to—"

Artemis turns onto her side to meet his eyes and the look on her face silences him.

"It was like," she presses a hand against his chest. "It was like listening to a radio all your life and then, without warning, someone shuts it off. And you're alone in the silence."

Wally pulls her into a hug. She always forgets that he's bigger than her until moments like this when his arms are wrapped around her and his chin is pressed to the top of her head and his entire body is like her own personal shield.

After that, the night drags on like usual. They don't talk about tomorrow. They kiss, they whisper about their childhoods, they fuck and afterward, when Wally is asleep and Artemis curls her arms around him from behind, she closes her eyes and tries to memorize this moment.

She wants this to be what she thinks about when she dies. She wants this to be the last memory she shares with Wally if their Jaeger doesn't make it back.

25

When morning comes, Bruce calls Wally and Artemis, privately, by knocking on Artemis' door rather than using the loudspeaker. As embarrassing as it is to have Bruce Wayne standing in her doorway, knowing full-well that neither of them has been sleeping alone for months it's the fear that keeps her embarrassment at bay as Bruce brings them both to the control room before the others are even awake, and tells them the truth.

It's not going to be as easy as tossing the nuke into the rift, they can only activate the bomb from inside. Wally and Artemis will need to jump into the breach to detonate it.

Bruce assures them that its safe, that the safety pods on Spitfire have been upgraded for this specific reason but Wally holds Artemis' hand so tight that she knows he's not convinced. They agree to Bruce's plan, they agree to not let the others know until the last second, they stand before Bruce Wayne and agree to put their lives on the line for everyone else's.

They are quiet when M'gann, Conner, Dick, and Zatanna, arrive, glad that this secret will only have to be kept for a few hours. And all six stand at attention while Bruce unveils the bomb, fresh from the suburbs of New Jersey, that he believes will save them all.

26

That last fight is something Artemis will remember acutely for the rest of her life. Every punch, every kill, every command she and Wally are ordered will be seared into her memory in much the same way Jade's death was.

Bruce sees them off, tells Zatanna to take care of his son, and Dick pulls his helmet on before anyone can see the tears running down his face.

The bomb is strapped to Spitfire so Dr. Fate and the Bio-Ship flank Wally and Artemis on the journey to the breach. If Kaiju are psychic it wouldn't have surprised anyone on the mission that day, because as soon as they approach the rift Kaiju start rising from the ocean.

M'gann and Conner tangle with the first one as it jumps them, wrapping its long arms around the waist of the Bio-Ship and squeezing like its giving an enthusiastic hug of death.

"Bio-Ship?" Wally shouts through the intercom but before he or Artemis can turn Spitfire around M'gann yells back, "We got this! Keep going."

They do. They make it within a hundred feet of the breach when two more Kaiju leap from the rift, slamming into Dr. Fate's chest and knocking the gold war machine on its ass.

Artemis aims Spitfire's right arm in the direction of Dr. Fate, she has a clear shot here, where she hadn't with the Bio-Ship, and she uses the crossbow built into Spitfire's arm to pierce the neck of the first Kaiju, killing it instantly.

Zatanna yells her thanks across the intercom before Dick fumbles with Dr. Fate's right arm to shoot the second Kaiju in the chest. Before he can, the pair tells Wally and Artemis to leave them, that the breach is right there. _Just go_.

Sprinting across the ocean floor Artemis unstraps the bomb from their back. They pause for a moment, both of their thoughts swirling around their friends who have no idea what they're about to do and circling back to themselves. As they prepare to jump Wally and Artemis turn to look at each other across the cockpit, leaving Spitfire cross-eyed on the edge of the breach.

They don't need to say I love you, because they're inside each other's heads and it's a feeling that is conveyed better without any words at all.

When they jump, a Kaiju leaps up from the breach, knocking them out of the rift and back to the ocean floor. The nuke clatters out of Spitfire's grasp as the Kaiju's hand grates the Jaeger's neck. Wally grabs the beast's maw with Spitfire's left hand and pulls the thing off in one sharp yank. Artemis collects the nuke while Wally shoves Spitfire's left fist through the Kaiju's chest. The creature gets one last swipe at the Jaeger's head before it dies, and it's a good swipe.

There are holes left in the cockpit from the Kaiju's long nails and Wally hangs limp in his harness. Artemis concentrates on the fact that he's not dead because she can still hear his thoughts flitting against her own.

He's badly hurt though and Artemis knows exactly how long she can pilot this thing herself. Ten minutes. That's all the time she could possibly need. As she presses the auto-eject for Wally's side of the Jaeger she hears a small series of pops from behind her. Its like someone is blowing bubbles in a glass of water with a straw.

When she turns around she knows what she'll see but even so she screams at the sight of Dr. Fate's mangled corpse, its gold frame is melted and scattered among the Kaiju's body parts. She knows either Dick or Zatanna had pressed the self-destruct button but she doesn't have time to mourn or even hope they're alive. She waits for Wally's pod to eject from the Jaeger and settles into the silence in the cockpit with renewed vigor as she leaps into the rift.

She remembers hitting the detonation button on the nuke. She remembers ejecting herself. She remembers the warmth that had propelled her into the ocean as she lost consciousness. She remembers thinking that this must be what it feels like to die.

27

When she regains consciousness its in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in Wally's arms. He'd thought she was dead, so when she chokes on the water filling her lungs and scrambles out of his arms to hack salt water up her throat, Wally starts crying and doesn't stop for a very long time.

Artemis doesn't cry—not when they tell her Zatanna and Dick didn't make it, not when M'gann clings to her when they're all back at The Cave, not when Conner offers her some dinner or Wally tucks her into bed.

The world was meant to end. She was meant to die, but neither happened and now she has no idea what to do with herself. Can't even grieve for her friends because she's too busy being selfish and battling posttraumatic stress.

She manages to tell her father they were successful in a brief text, but the entire time she types it she doesn't know why she's doing it.

He responds with two words: Good work.

Not, I'm proud of you, or, I want to see you, or, Hey, thanks for saving the world.

Just, Good Work, like Artemis had been smuggling some dope for him.

She curls into a ball on the bottom bunk, listens for Jade's even breathing above her and when she recognizes the silence she finally, finally cries.

28

It's weeks before any of them feel up to leaving The Cave, and when they do the press has a field day. There are more reporters, cameras and helicopters circling the movie theater Wally had persuaded them to go to than Artemis thought belonged in one city.

They are ushered back to The Cave, told to lay low until the press dies down, which might not awhile considering how often people save the world and all, and that is that. Bruce has them so spoiled by the end of a month that it's Artemis who suggests Trieu Phong in a rush of claustrophobia one late night.

All four of them are huddled in the training room with their comforters and a projector and The Shining and Wally watches her with big eyes as she describes the rural town she had spent most of her childhood.

"No one will bother us there," Artemis says. "It's on the ocean. There's great food."

Wally is sold.

Bruce, after much cajoling, sets them up in a two-story home on the beach. Artemis was right, no one bothers them, and while all four agree its not forever they enjoy their time in that town, in each other's company. They spend many nights on the beach watching the stars, and this eases their memories of blood and death throes and giant lizards.

When Artemis wakes from her nightmares in a hot sweat, Wally makes her tea and they huddle on the porch swing until morning. When Wally tells a story that involves Dick without realizing it, and trails off to a place Artemis cannot follow, she holds his hand and draws little circles on his palm with her thumb.

One night, after two weeks in that house, M'gann's screams wake everyone. Wally and Artemis rush her and Conner's room to find the girl in the center of a sheet-less bed, her legs drawn to her chest. She doesn't eat for three days but none of them leave her side.

When she finally talks about it she describes a vivid nightmare in which all of their lost friends surrounded her, whispering that it was her fault, her fault, her fault. It is weeks before she steps foot in the kitchen again and the cookies that she makes when she does are close to perfect.

It takes a long time and it's not easy, but bit-by-bit they piece each other back together. And six months after the apocalypse that wasn't, Artemis is at peace.


End file.
